Category: Blogs

Each year, a small group of Masters students is based at the University’s field station, SCENE. While they must travel into Glasgow for classes, they get truly unique experiences, some of which are chronicled in our Behind the SCENE blog series. Now, after arriving in September as a new resident Masters student, Danielle Orrell sheds some light on the year’s activity at the University’s Loch Lomond field station.

We all know that diet can have a big impact on our health, and the same is true for the wildlife around us. Some animals adapt to new food resources, often bringing them into our everyday, where we see them scavenging for morsels. Recent Institute graduate Dr Nina O’Hanlon talks about her research into gull diet and how it is affecting their colonies.

Most of us have heard about antioxidants in the news or at the supermarket. But what are they? And how are they related to damage causing particles called free radicals? In this post Dr Shona Smith discusses her research on these important molecules, and explores their relationship to animal growth.

In villages across the Malaysian state of Sabah, locals are being asked to do something unusual: expose themselves to—potentially malaria carrying—mosquitoes. The person behind this request is third year PhD student Rebecca Brown. Here, Rebecca explains why and walks us through the steps of conducting her tropical field research.

Dr Dominic McCafferty reflects his time living and working in remote field stations and their importance in ecology. He also discusses the running and history of the University’s own field station on the banks of Loch Lomond—the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE).